


Puppetry

by graiai



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Guro, M/M, Missing Scene, Necrophilia, Patch 5.2: Echoes of a Fallen Star Spoilers, wound fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:41:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24335302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graiai/pseuds/graiai
Summary: “Your secrets or my flesh. I care not which you give me first.”
Relationships: Elidibus/Zenos yae Galvus
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20
Collections: Nonconathon 2020





	Puppetry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cadmean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadmean/gifts).



> please note the spoilers tag!

Zenos feels the moment time freezes: his father stilling, the breath caught in his lungs and left to stagnate, the incessant buzz of ceruleum lamplight falling away. All is silent, for neither he nor his prey have need for air. He waits an absent heartbeat—two. And then, once the Emissary’s keen gaze grows satisfied: “That is a far cry from fair sport.” There’s a certain joy in watching the thing in his body startle. “You thought I would be none the wiser?”

It’s strange, really. Zenos can feel his own stolen flesh tense in anticipation from ten paces away. Had the heart in this soldier's chest have enough blood left to beat, he thinks perhaps it might quicken as it ever has for so few.

“I did,” Elidibus says, unashamed. “In fact, I’ve yet to meet a mortal with your gift who was aware of such minor distortions in the flow of æther. Although I suppose you are no longer mortal. You— _borrowed_ the Echo, did you not?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Removing the soldier’s helm, Zenos is wary as he has never before been, with so peculiar an adversary before him, and for that his fascination with the creature only grows. He knows his own body well enough, the twitches of muscle noticeable only for the subtle shifting of his plate, to be sure the feeling is mutual. “You are… familiar to me. Why?”

“The face, were I to wager a guess.”

“I am not so single-mindedly focused on the hunt not to glance in a mirror from time to time,” he answers with mild affected humor. It might be funny, had either of them appreciation for such things—and indeed before the Emissary can broach a counter Zenos speaks again, the words forming on his lips unbidden: “Were you there when the sky fell?”

Elidibus speaks more deliberately than Zenos believes he himself ever has: “When your comrade cast down the moon?”

“We never had the pleasure to meet,” and at this his mirth is _not_ all affect, to his own surprise. “One of my few regrets. No, it was something else. A dream of mine. A city, burning, and… I have not the words. Such devastation as I have never seen. Nor can I replicate it, try as I might.”

Zenos watches his body recoil in what he assumes must be terror. He thinks perhaps he can feel it as well, faint as a ripple on the surface of water, a reflection through their shared flesh of some emotion he has never before known. It cannot be the same as that he has so long sought at the Warrior of Light’s hand—this is a hollow thing, unfulfilling for all it seems all-encompassing in its grip upon Elidibus.

And why? Surely of any creature, an Ascian would appreciate Zenos reaching for those far-flung dreams.

The Ascian raises a slow hand to grasp Ame-no-Habakiri’s hilt, and in acceptance of the invitation Zenos does the same with the soldier’s nameless blade. But Elidibus wields his body poorly: he meets the first parries as if by rote, but fails to cover himself, and with only the Elezen’s strength, what should be no match for his own, does he emerge victorious.

Zenos casts aside his blade. “Come,” he snaps, “ _fight me_ ,” and is utterly careless in catching Ame-no-Habakiri’s blade in his borrowed hands. The wounds bleed sluggishly and cut into the bones, a bright moment of pain and frustrated _want_. He minds not the newfound struggle it is with damaged muscle and ligaments to curl his fingers, for each fractional motion sparks heat in his core and this body will be left to rot as any other refuse soon enough besides. It needn’t remain functional for long, or for much. “I haven’t the patience to play tutor,” he snarls, grabbing the Ascian by the wrist in a bloody grip. Drags him down to the floor. “What is your game?”

“The rejoining of worlds,” says Elidibus. “I desire naught else.”

Zenos scoffs at the non-answer. “‘The rejoining of worlds’,” he mocks, and pries back his own corpse’s head by the hair to properly see the gash in its throat. “The only rejoining I desire is ours.”

It no longer bleeds—of course it wouldn’t, it has been _months_ since his demise—but as Zenos expected, nor does it show the slightest sign of healing. He had been unsure if that were within the Ascians’ power and only beyond his own, new and untried as he yet is in the manipulation of æther. This, though, this bloodless, raw wound with the slightest sweet smell of decay (how long, he wonders, was it allowed to grow rank before decomposition was halted in its possession?) is all he could have hoped for and more, and he can feel both beneath his touch and through that inexorable link between soul and native body the shiver of vocal cords when Elidibus rasps, “What is it you strive for, then? What aim?” There is a catch in his voice which seems to be more than simply anatomy at play, some desperate emotion Zenos cannot name. “Is it as simple as all creation sundered by your hand?”

Zenos laughs into his—Elidibus’—hair. “My sights are not yet set so high. But someday, perhaps.” He casts aside the tatters of the soldier’s glove, presses clumsy fingers inside the gash he so kindly made for himself all that time ago. “Do you truly think it within my grasp? What an honor.”

Elidibus’ lips graze all but silently against Zenos’ cheek. “I would not dare underestimate you, now that I know what you are,” and then there is some aborted addition, the shape of a word Zenos cannot make out for its shortness, and he allows himself to mourn what flirtation it might have been.

The Ascian is tense beneath him. Zenos had so rarely considered the bulk of his own body before he found himself cast out of it: now, perched above it, even the Elezen’s long limbs struggle to span the breadth of him, its soft cock trapped against his chest. He had quick discovered the key to pausing the process of putrefaction (though even now he rarely bothers—none of these bodies are worth keeping so long, and he holds some minor fascination with how very quickly they turn), and though he knows it must be possible, he has not yet found a suitable, bloodless method to stiffen a cock. There are other ways, of course, even such mundane methods as any man who has seen a hanging would know, but no manner by which a man might be killed and keep his blood holds an interest for Zenos.

It’s no matter, for taking his pleasure of the Emissary does not require a cock. Little does, in Zenos’ experience, when fingers and gore are so much more readily available, and usually more satisfying.

The Ascian keeps still as Zenos curls his fingers inside of the wound, watching with fascination the way they bulge inside of his throat, and he is silent by necessity, for three of Zenos’ fingers inside of his windpipe have stopped up all air. The way he lies beneath him, though, is not defeat—Zenos is glad, at least, of that. Fear may be pathetic, but it is tenuously forgivable, an animal reaction that cannot be stopped up by those so unfortunate as to be cursed to feel it; submission is a choice made _in_ fear, and that, Zenos has no interest in. But Elidibus is not submitting to him, merely, it seems, biding his time.

“Can you feel this, as I do?” He pumps his fingers in and out of his torn throat, the ragged edges of both wounds catching on each other as his palm curls in to press in ever deeper. Though it differs little, Zenos supposes, from taking oneself in hand by traditional means—for he can feel it from both within and without—it is eminently more satisfying, perhaps because while he can feel himself swallow around the intrusion of his fingers, it is not he who chose to swallow. “The pain is made fainter by death, alas, but it does remain. I feel everything,” he adds, with a particular emphasis he knows the Ascian will understand, “you do with my body. I have ever since I found its tether. Do _you_ feel it too?” He grinds shamelessly, pointlessly against the Ascian’s body.

“I suppose you must,” he says, considering, “or else what _point_ is there?” And: “Good. I want you to feel this.”

Elidibus suddenly bucks beneath him, twisting violently in a way that only rips his throat wider (and _oh_ , how Zenos wishes he could feel it tear for the first time once again) as he tries to free himself, or perhaps only to fight. _That_ would be invigorating, if the Emissary were so like-minded. If only.

Zenos is too well-seated above him to be knocked off, but Elidibus does manage to use the body’s bulk to snap the Elezen soldier’s frail wrist as he pries at the hand half-buried in his throat, and Zenos cries out for the feeling. When he puts his weight on the wrist, on his own body’s spine through the tattered remains of its throat, even soft he still comes, spend soaking forgotten into the soldier’s trousers.

It is in that moment, that half-second of ecstasy, that Elidibus makes his escape, the oddly familiar hue of his soul fleeing like any other pathetic, cornered little thing. Zenos thinks of trying to catch it in his hand, just to see if he could, but there’s no more fun to be gotten from him just yet. He’ll be back, that much is certain. There will be time yet for further revelry.

It is to the familiar hum of ceruleum lights and the harsh sound of his father’s breath that Zenos catches his own corpse’s cool lips with the rotting soldier’s, and presses past them his soul.

Crouched over him, the soldier’s body collapses.


End file.
